Planar light-emitting diodes (LEDs) fabricated within a single high-mobility quantum well are demonstrated. Our approach leads to a dramatic reduction of radiative lifetime and junction area with respect to conventional vertical LEDs, promising very high-frequency device operation. Devices were fabricated by UV lithography and wet chemical etching starting from p-type modulation-doped AlGaAs/GaAs heterostructures grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Electrical and optical measurements from room temperature down to 1.8 K show high spectral purity and high external efficiency. Time-resolved measurements yielded extremely short recombination times of the order of 50 ps, demonstrating the relevance of the present scheme for high-frequency device applications in the GHz range.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0207735,
title = {High-performance planar light-emitting diode},
author = {Marco Cecchini and Vincenzo Piazza and Fabio Beltram and Marco Lazzarino and M. B. Ward and A. J. Shields and H. E. Beere and D. A. Ritchie},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0207735},
year = {2009}
}